. . .although you may find me here now and again, reading and commenting. For those of you who aren't bots and remain interested in my meanderings, you can find me here: http://callthebanners.wordpress.com/

Don't be a stranger.



I'm out, folks. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

My current position vis-a-vis graduate school, while being somewhat stressful, as not been without benefit. It's given me some time to think about my current direction and ponder where I *could* go, if I desired. It's strange, I've been chasing after what I've thought I wanted for so long that I didn't realize that it's been ages since I decided that was what I desired.

While I enjoy learning, I certainly enjoy teaching, and research, the situation with my program and difficulties with my adviser (which I won't detail here) have served to only put a bitter taste in my mouth regarding academia. Now, this may not be a permanent thing, and I know everyone goes through graduate school powered by inner rage like a locomotive, but at this particular snapshot in time, the end game isn't too appetizing.

I look back to when I have been happiest in since coming up here, my moments of bliss, and I realize that they really haven't be directly related to academia at all. All of them have been tangent, yes, but none of them involve the cloister.

They've all been when I was traveling. For example, the four day drive moving up here. Just me and my thoughts, out on the road, exploring a part of the country I'd never driven before -- lamenting that I couldn't take more time to do it. This year -- a year in which I spent more than a few months living in Rome -- the high point was getting away from others and traveling to Ravenna and Venice on my own, in a almost fevered attempt to pack as much in as I could. I was completely and utterly blissful.

Maybe I should be a travel writer. I wouldn't even know how to go about it, and where to start, though.

Man, thirty years on, Conan the Barbarian is still one bad ass movie. And it has one of my favorite scores in the history of, well, ever.

Life is sort of a trainwreck at the moment. Trying to figure out how to extricate myself. I'm currently not enrolled over at the school; I probably won't go back until the spring at the soonest. Honestly, I am not sure right now if I want to. Part of me wants to go ahead and finish up the investment, another part of me wants to set my campus building on fire.

At the same time, I've been wanting to write more. But not here. This place is dead. If I'm willing to put my words up for scrutiny on the internet, I at least want to do it in the place where someone might actually see it.

All of which is posted, of course, here.

I was told this weekend over a several-course dinner that I needed to "find a nice Lebanese girl who will cook for you."

If the food was any indication, this merits serious investigation.

An old conservative high school classmate just posted this pearl of wisdom:

"It's so nice that Obama is making sure there is no red tape and that the government is to make sure that the states get everything they need right away. It must make dems nervous that in times of crises the best thing to do is get government OUT OF THE WAY!"

Just think about that one for a while.

I am suspicious of the effects of tumblr. People are posting walls of images created by other people in lieu of actually saying anything. A picture my be worth a thousand words, but a thousand pictures is appropriately referred to as a "dump".

I swear, I don't think anything irritates me more than an idiot misusing the term "fascism".

There are days I just want to get on a motorcycle and ride away for a very long time.

I'm not enrolled this quarter. Not sure if I ever want to go back.

I probably shouldn't forcefully reply when people say dumb things, but then again, this is the internet and if you can't do it here, where can you do it, really?